The Polunsky Unit
Polk County's largest single workplace is a state prison, and the part of it people outside Texas have heard of is death row. Here is what the state's own record says it is, who runs it, what it does, and what it is not.
PolkTX cannot look up an inmate, pass on a message, or answer a question about any individual held or employed at this unit. All of that is TDCJ's, and every link below goes to them.
The unit
Texas Department of Criminal Justice · unit code TL · ACA accredited since January 2003
Allan B. Polunsky Unit
By the numbers
What it is, and what it is not
TDCJ moved death row for men to the Polunsky Unit in 1999, from the Ellis Unit. Men on death row are held in single cells, each with a window, and recreate individually; they get a regular diet and access to reading, writing and legal materials, and some may have a radio depending on custody level. Two things this county gets asked about and both answers are elsewhere: women on death row are held at the O'Daniel Unit, and executions are carried out in Huntsville — the state has required that since 1923. Nobody is executed in Polk County.
554 people work here, 388 of them in security, which makes the unit one of the largest employers in the county. TDCJ hires correctional officers continuously and the openings show up on our jobs page alongside the other big local employers. Windham School District, which runs the education program inside, employs another twelve here and hires separately.
The unit runs a box factory and unit maintenance, a tree farm, a unit garden and a garden that supplies the area food bank, and keeps security horses and pack canines. Education runs from adult basic education and GED through pre-release and cognitive intervention classes, with career and technology programs in automotive transmission repair, electrical trades, HVAC and refrigeration, and mill and cabinetmaking. Inmate crews do community work for the area food bank and for TxDOT.
Ambulatory medical, dental and mental health services, available around the clock, managed by UTMB. There is a seventeen-bed infirmary including thirteen assisted living beds, two respiratory isolation rooms and two mental health observation rooms. TDCJ classifies it a Type I geriatric facility, with all services on one level.
Windham School District
A school district with no schoolhouse, and twelve of its staff work here
The education program inside Polunsky is not run by TDCJ and is not one of the county's six local districts. It is Windham, a school district that exists only inside Texas prisons.
Windham School District
Not one of the six
Livingston, Onalaska, Corrigan-Camden, Big Sandy, Leggett and Goodrich are the school districts that serve Polk County's children and elect their own trustees. Windham serves adults in custody, elects nobody locally, and its campus here is inside the fence. It belongs on this page rather than on the schools page for exactly that reason.
In the district's own words, Windham "operates at 102 campuses within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, providing appropriate educational programs to meet the needs of men and women residing within correctional facilities." Its academic, career and technical, and cognitive behavior programs are built around one goal it states plainly: the skills to get a job on release. Campuses sit in seven regions across the state; the administration complex is in Huntsville.
Windham has its own Board of Trustees, and its own superintendent — Kristina J. Hartman — selected by that Board, which delegates the day-to-day running of the district to her. The district's leadership page is explicit that the Texas Board of Criminal Justice serves in a separate capacity from Windham's Board. It is a school district in its own right that happens to operate entirely inside somebody else's buildings.
TDCJ's own record for this unit lists literacy and adult basic education through GED, the CHANGES pre-release course and cognitive intervention, plus career and technology programs in automotive transmission repair, electrical trades, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration, and mill and cabinetmaking. Twelve Windham staff are counted among the unit's 554 employees.
Windham posts its own openings and runs its own application process — it is not TDCJ hiring, and a correctional officer job is not a Windham job. Its Polunsky campus openings show up on our jobs page alongside the rest.
Visiting, writing or finding someone
PolkTX cannot look anyone up, pass on a message, or answer a question about an individual inmate, and does not hold any of that information. TDCJ runs all of it and every rule is theirs.
Sources · 7
EVERY FIGURE ON THIS PAGE IS TDCJ'S OWN, read from the unit's entry in the TDCJ unit directory on 2026-09-08: the address and phone, that it came online in November 1993 and has been ACA accredited since January 2003, the 2,984 capacity, the staffing breakdown totalling 554, the 472 acres, the custody levels, the warden and regional director, and the lists of operations, education programs and medical capabilities. The death row passages are from TDCJ's own death row facts page, which states that death row moved to Polunsky in 1999, describes the single cells with windows and individual recreation, places women on death row at the O'Daniel Unit, and records that Texas has required executions to be carried out by the state in Huntsville since 1923. STAFFING AND CAPACITY ARE A SNAPSHOT: TDCJ updates these pages without notice and a prison's headcount moves constantly, so treat the numbers as the state's most recent published figures rather than today's. NOT PUBLISHED HERE AND NEVER WILL BE: anything about an individual held at or working at this unit. PolkTX holds no inmate records, cannot look anyone up, cannot pass on a message, and has no relationship with TDCJ. Visiting rules, mail rules and inmate searches are TDCJ's and are linked rather than restated, because restating them is how a rule gets published a version out of date. THE WINDHAM SECTION is from the district's own site, read 2026-09-08: the 102 campuses, the seven regions, the Huntsville headquarters and the quoted sentence are from its About Windham page; the superintendent and the governance are from its Leadership page. ONE SUPPLIED DETAIL WAS WRONG AND IS NOT PUBLISHED: that Windham is governed by the Texas Board of Criminal Justice. Its Leadership page says the opposite in as many words — "The Texas Board of Criminal Justice serves in a separate capacity from the Windham School District Board of Trustees" — and that the superintendent is selected by Windham's own Board. NOT PUBLISHED EITHER: the characterisations of Windham's atmosphere and approach that came with it, which trace to a business-listing aggregator rather than to the district, and are the kind of thing this site does not put in an authority's mouth. The teaching programs at this unit are TDCJ's list for this unit, not Windham's statewide catalogue.
- TDCJ unit directory, Allan B. Polunsky Unitread 9/8/26
- TDCJ death row factsread 9/8/26
- TDCJ visitationread 9/8/26
- TDCJ inmate searchread 9/8/26
- Windham School Districtread 9/8/26
- Windham School District, About Windhamread 9/8/26
- Windham School District, Leadershipread 9/8/26